


mirrors lie but the people who love you don't

by pyknicGinger



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 20:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6675112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyknicGinger/pseuds/pyknicGinger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Apr 26, 2016, 7:52 PM]:<br/>it's just like<br/>love<br/>in words</p>
            </blockquote>





	mirrors lie but the people who love you don't

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday, [tree](http://treeprince.tumblr.com/)! here is my half of the joint gift from [chris](http://chrisytopher.tumblr.com/) and I. thanks for being really awesome. we love having you as a part of our lives! <3

# Dave

 

The storm comes quickly, as most unexpected rain showers tend to.

You're laying on the floor of his apartment, debating whether to pass out or get another cup of coffee before you do so unintentionally, when the first roll of thunder rumbles by. You're in kind of a crazy position, the two of you, with him sprawled out across the couch and you face up on the carpet, ass wedged up against the foot of the sofa so your legs stick up at an almost perfect ninety degree angle. Of course, you hadn't actually started out that way—you'd been perched on the back of the couch, facing away from the television, when he'd yanked the back of your collar and sent you tumbling.

He'd laughed and you had squawked—then your head had hit the floor and he'd gone startlingly quiet, flailing off the couch, too, in his haste to get to you. He'd apologized and apologized and apologized, fretting, asking if you were okay a dozen times and then a dozen times more even after you'd punched his chest as some kind of reassurance. And when he'd been thoroughly placated, he'd climbed back on the sofa and splayed himself across the whole thing, shaking his head, probably still a little bit amused at your fall.

He's kind of an asshole, you think—an asshole who cares, but an asshole nonetheless. That works out, though, because you're kind of an asshole, too.

Technically, you're supposed to be watching whatever's on the TV. A video game livestream, maybe—there's enough yelling and cursing to make you think that's probably still the case. He'd been so fucking _pumped_ about it, about how these two guys were going to go for some kind of in-game record, and he'd roped you in because _It's no fun without someone to laugh with, Dave! Jeez!_ and you couldn't actually say no.

But you haven't been watching much of the stream since you've been on the floor.

You'd tried, really—but tilting your head back to see the television upside down takes more effort than it's worth, and, honestly, the whole thing doesn't interest you much. But there are other things you can see from this angle that are worth watching, so you haven't bothered to move.

Things like him.

Like his hair, dark and shaggy and untamable; impossibly animated in a way that hair shouldn't be, you think, swaying with excitement when he moves and frizzing out when he's irritated and ruffling when he throws his head back to laugh.

And oh, he _laughs_.

He laughs with his whole body, every fiber of his being, everything he is as a person. It's deep and high-pitched all at once, scaling octaves like a grand piano, like a set of chimes or a pipe organ, maybe. Like the sweetest music you've ever heard. It curls up around the room, drowning out everything, brightening the late-night darkness and warming you up even though you aren't cold. You can feel it in your chest, in your face, all the way down to your toes—the warmth. His bellows are uneven, raucous and carefree and unbound by anything, broken by snorts and wheezes. He cackles and chuckles, hoots and hollers, soft and rough, loud and quiet, young and old.

And when he laughs, his face lights up like the room, too. His smile stretches wide, splitting his face almost in two as his eyes scrunch closed and crinkle at the sides. He doesn't see when he laughs, he feels—he _feels_ the happiness, you think. He absorbs it, and then pushes it all out to everything else around him, sharing the joy. _This is funny!_ his whole body says _This is good and funny and look, you should be laughing too! Be happy with me!_ and sometimes you do, despite yourself, because it's impossible not to roll with the waves of pure emotion he radiates.

He _radiates_. Blinding, almost. There are no secrets. There's no hidden agenda, no guarded statement, no bottled expression. He is who he is every waking moment, as wild and free as any twenty-something can be. He's the sun, maybe, or the sky. Or the breeze on a warm day, rustling through the trees and mussing up hair and whipping the hems of clothes. Abstract but tangible.

Thunder cracks, shaking the foundation of the apartment, and in the blink of an eye there's a torrential downpour outside. His laughter cuts off in surprise, but he doesn't jump—you do, though, and he looks down at you with a kind of worried downturn to his lips. You shrug, but he doesn't make any kind of indication that he'd caught you staring, or that he cares at all even if he did.

He runs a hand through his hair, jostling his glasses, and sighs. _I hope the power doesn't go out_ , he says with the breath, and even though he doesn't actually speak the words you can feel it and see it all at once. His hands stay tangled in his hair for a moment, resting there.

Long, lithe, precise fingers, calloused from years of hard physical labor and strong, but somehow still gentle enough to caress the checkerboard keys of any piano he touches. Light enough to coax out music that captures his emotion just as much as his laugh, and firm enough to grip opponents in the wrestling ring on Thursday nights. They're the hands of a man with many facets, many sides, all of which you've seen at one point or another.

His touches feel like fire and ice all at once, and when he holds your hand you feel grounded, like he's an anchor, somehow, despite the fact that when you're lost it's usually because he's the one who's blown you away. His palm molds to yours, fitting perfectly, wrapped around your knuckles in a way that shouldn't be comfortable but somehow still is. Maybe because it's him.

The power does go out.

It's late, now, and the sudden cut-off plunges the entire apartment into pitch blackness. He whines, high-pitched and sad, like a puppy in a cage who's just accidentally swatted his favorite toy out of reach, and you snort. He nudges your leg with his foot.

No electricity means no television, which means you can't even watch shit from his crappy DVD collection now that the stream is dead. And it means no internet, either, and no way to charge your phones, both of which have been steadily approaching death for a while now.

He wails again, and you hear him shift, then there's the sliding of fabric against fabric, and then a thump. And suddenly, he's flat on his back next to you on the floor, pressed up against your side. He drapes his right arm across your face like an asshole.

 _I'm bored_ , the sound says. You scoff a little in return, but don't offer up any kind of solution. You're tired, still, and you don't really feel like moving. Maybe you'll just sleep on the floor? Your back will hate you tomorrow if you do, but you don't particularly care.

The two of you lay like that for a while, listening to the sounds of the storm outside, claps of thunder and strikes of lightning echo by the pitiful noises he makes every now and then. It's nice—almost relaxing. You start to doze off.

(Around three am, though, he jumps up with a kind of sudden ferocity that jerks you half-awake, and before you have any idea what's happening he's dragging you by the arm toward the apartment door, ignoring all the surprised curses you throw his way. And you keep cursing, even as you dance in the rain together, running through the empty sidewalks soaked to the bone, splashing in puddles, laughing, laughing, laughing.)

 

# John

 

You know he doesn't like to be around lots of people all at once, but sometimes he makes exceptions. You know it bothers him, too, that he just can't enjoy crowds as much as you do. Because you're important to each other! And he wants to spend time with you! And you want to spend time with him! But no matter how many times you tell him it's okay, that you don't mind evenings with just the two of you, you don't think he really believes you.

So on the days when he insists the two of you go out and do something, you try to pick stuff that he'll enjoy, too.

Like the Natural Science Museum.

The one in Houston is small, comparatively, but it's close by, and no matter how many times you visit he always just _explodes_ when you walk through the door. He tries to hide it, but there's always a spring in his step—it's a fast-walk instead of a lazy saunter, light and lithe, swift and sleek, _hype as heck_. You always go to the paleontology room first, because he likes that the best, and he'll wander around looking at things in a different order each time.

He likes to talk, and you like to hear him talk.

You don't think he realizes how happy he sounds when he talks about stuff that he likes! It's really, really nice. You love the sound of his voice, his soothing monotone on normal days, when you're talking about the weather or what to get for dinner or the reason cabinet doors should open from the left instead of the right. But you _love_ the sound of his voice, his fast-paced facts and genuine inflection, when you're talking about the skeletal structure of a triceratops or the evolution of raptors or why Jurassic Park sucks (which it totally doesn't, but he thinks so).  

It's, like, _amazing_. He's always so quiet—quiet so you have to listen, so you have to stop everything you're doing to pay attention to him with your entire brain. Captivating. You don't think he means to do it, but you think it's awesome. Really, really awesome. The whole world just kind of stops when he talks, lazy and excited all at once, firing off facts you've never heard before but are absolutely convinced are the truth because he sucks at lying, and he wouldn't lie about this, anyway.

His voice is music. All kinds of music, different depending on the subject of conversation. Lo-fi hip-hop rhythms by default, soft and low and soothing, no lyrics, just feeling. Sonatas on melancholy days, when he's profoundly sad for reasons he doesn't understand, deep and longing and uncertain. Rough metal chords when he's angry, jarring and ragged and broken, sounds you want to soothe with your own songs. And 8-bit beats at times like these, vibrant and hopping and joyous, beautiful in its own way.

It's neat, you think, how he carries it all with him. The music, that is. He lives and breathes it, even if he doesn't mean to. It pours from his pores, permeating the air around him, so thick you can almost see the notes and smell the sounds.

He smells like sharp shampoo and endearing awkwardness, warm bread and childlike wonder, sweet caramel apples and unbridled honesty. He smells like late nights together, of comfort, of adventure, of solidarity and uncertainty, but security all the same. Hot tea and ice cream at four in the morning, cold pizza and coffee for breakfast at seven, steaming microwaved rice and chilled juice at one in the afternoon, room-temperature Thai chicken and tap water for dinner. The steam from the shower, the detergent on your sheets, the candles always burning on the kitchen counter. He smells like home.

He _is_ home.

He tugs your sleeve a little, moving away from the tyrannosaurus rex to the big hanging fish-but-not-a-fish-because-it-has-sharp-teeth, and you follow, swept along by his barely-muffled enthusiasm. And you laugh, and he turns around to give you a look that says _what?_ and you just shake your head.

Because you don't know what, really. You're just happy! You're _happy_. You're happy that _he's_ happy.

You like it when he's happy.

It's hard for other people, you think, to tell when that's the case. But you know him, and you know the little tells he has—the tiny ways he expresses what's going on in his head. How his movements are just a fraction smoother, how his hands are steady in his pockets—not restless like they usually are. How he rocks on the balls of his feet when he's talking, trying to convey his enthusiasm with his body. And how, on rare occasions, _he smiles._

His smiles aren't big, really, but they're earth-shattering. He could slow down or speed up the turn of the globe with his smiles, you think. They're muted, soft, but so genuine. He does them without thinking, in moments like this—when he's caught up in something wonderful, something he genuinely enjoys, when he's purely and totally himself—they're _incredible_. The  slight upturn of parted lips (because you don't think you've ever seen him smile with this mouth closed) and the dimple on his left cheek that peeks out with the small miracle. The way his spray-paint scattering of freckles seems to light up, too, brightened by the emotion shining through his pale skin. Like a low-opacity, reversed night sky. Like a patternless constellation you could stare at forever.

He's leaning over something in a glass case, now—a taxidermied bird in a line of taxidermied birds, maybe showing the evolution of some other taxidermied bird. _This is so neat! This is so cool! Look at this, John! Look at this!_ his smile says, even though his words are something closer to facts about the waterproof-ness of feathers. And you do look! But you look at him more than you look at the dead animal, because, you think, you like him more.

You walk out of the museum hand in hand, just like always. A simple gesture, because you don't need make out sessions in public places to know you love each other. Dinner is a quiet affair, sandwiches from a family-owned restaurant nearby, and they're really good! But you think the best part about the meal is the fact that he's still talking, gesturing wildly about the not-fish, and about whales, and about how the not-fish became whales.

It's evening when you leave the restaurant, but he doesn't walk back to your car. Instead, he turns to the sidewalk, and the two of you wander around the city for a while, weaving through the bustling crowds in the cool air. It's nice, with the sunset dipping over the skyscrapers, making everything a bright, warm orange that reflects off his hair and his skin, setting him aglow.

(An hour later, you're standing in the middle of a park, surrounded by trees and pathways and grass. And he takes your hand and leads you to the swings, and he sits there and dares you to go push yourself higher than him, and you try your hardest but he beats you, just like he always does, so you curse at him, and you keep cursing as you even chase him around the fields, as you rocket down the slide backwards and climb the jungle gym, and scale trees and roll in the flowers, laughing, laughing, laughing.)

**Author's Note:**

> check out chris's beautiful artwork and the second half of our gift [here](http://chrisydraws.tumblr.com/post/143482205413/my-portion-of-mine-and-egbertiians-joint)!


End file.
